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April 18, 2011, 11:30 am UTC

Charles Darwin's famous words still continue to haunt us 24X7 for 365 days of the year. With every aspect, every step, it I purely survival of the fittest and lately it is not just the fittest but also the smartest. Earlier we had the traditional media tools viz. newspapers, radio and television to hog the limelight. However lately with the evolution of technology and development of strategies, it has now come up to the digital tools that are fighting for survival and captivating the market as a whole. Social media has become one of the most loved mediums for the youth today and therefore Indian business houses are gearing up to make the most of it.

Social networking is yet a medium that marketers globally are only in the process of understanding, for which a lot has to be investigated about the immense power and reach social networking has. Aware of the fact that a large chunk of the target group spends a lot of time online and mainly on social media platforms rather than the traditional advertising mediums, many global names have rightfully enhanced their presence on the social media platforms.

Since the past 3-4 years, when Facebook as well Twitter were just sprouting into social media and branding tools, there has been a lot of hue and cry as to which is the best of them all. However, there have been a lot of industry stalwarts and experts from the advertising arena who have time and again said that both of them have an equal leverage and are irreplaceable as of now. No one is certain about the future, and in the same way, no one can say if tomorrow Google or Microsoft or Apple would come up with something much better and bigger. The future is too farfetched for this rising media where there can be innovations and inventions taking place with every passing minute. With brands from all the fields jumping onto the social media brand wagon, it is getting clustered with new contests and sweepstakes within minutes. So what exactly are the key elements of these two big guns of digital space?

Facebook is surely one of the most successful start-ups of this decade. Be it because of the individual social network of the users, photo-sharing, event updates or even the applications, networking is widely touted as the next big thing people have begun to do online after search. Twitter is a tad harder to navigate around with. It encourages you to connect with people through regular updates from wherever you are. It is the perfect tool for a spontaneous reaction or an instant pop up on your daily activities. According to a report from Internet World Stats, Facebook is one of the most sought after social networking websites with a massive strength of more than 500 million users while Twitter has generated 175 million unique users across the world. Twitter has already become a popular medium in India, thanks to the way celebrities like Sachin Tendulkar, Shahrukh Khan and Salman Khan are making use of it. International brands like MTV, Pepsi, BlackBerry, Starbucks and many more are also effectively making use of these platforms to connect with their target group. Arunava Sengupta, Founder Director of Scarecrow Communications Ltd. explains, - Both Facebook and Twitter are the best platforms in the digital space today. Both of them have their significant merits and a few demerits too. However, as of now or rather today, I feel that Facebook has a slight edge over Twitter but with the rise of technology, I probably think that even these two will be outdated one day. While Twitter is known for its easy navigation and promotion system to reach a lot of people beyond your friends, Facebook on the other hand, simplifies life with its applications, chat, messaging, image and video sharing and making connections.

Each has its pros and cons and it is probably one of the most difficult queries to answer today. The bigwigs of the digital and advertising space have been wrecking their brains to figure out this immensely confusing question. Each of them have their opinion about either Facebook or Twitter but none is firm on their stand as they know that change is inevitable and there will be something even better than these two or probably a better upgrade is in store.

However will either Twitter or Facebook will rise to be the next Google or will they dissolve in the backseat of technological and social evolution is a question which is yet left unanswered if not untouched.